Eurobodalla - History of the Moruya District.  By H.J. Gibbney
 

Chapter 7 - Moruya and Bodalla 1860 - 1880
 

The town from which Flanagan departed was still growing slowly with about fifty four per cent of its population under twenty one. It was more than fifty per cent Catholic and most of the Catholics were Irish migrants of the 40s and 50s. Both Irish and English settlers tended either to migrate in large family parties or to set up chain migration patterns on arrival which rapidly increased the size of the family group. Marriage patterns where generally narrow. Nobody married inland beyond Braidwood in this period and inland marriages of any sort were rare.

Marriages up and down the coast were common but it was unusual to seek partners north of Bateman’s Bay or south of Bega.  Most people married within the Moruya district and few moved outside their own religious community. Intermarriage between Catholic and Protestant was not unknown. The marriage of Marian Flanagan and Francis Hawdon - probably the most prominent mixed marriage - was not a success.  The resulting divorce may have been due to tries of the day - strong in a community as evenly divided as this one - proved too much for the union. 

There were lingering racial tensions too in the early years between English and Irish. Rural boredom led to heavy drinking which occasionally erupted into violence. On such occasions national war cries sometimes emerged and the almost inevitable presence of relatives either by blood or by marriage could lead to escalation. It is probably a tribute to the good sense of most settlers that there were not more incidents like the one revealed in a police court case of December 1859. While John Flood, a solid Irish farmer from Tipperary was harrowing in a paddock across the road from Longs Shannon View Hotel, a friend called Kennedy became involved in a drunken brawl with two sons of the Englishman John Constable.  The insults became more and more personal. Robert Constable began to bellow, "I'm an Englishman, ready to fight any Irish boy".

James Cummins thereupon crossed the road and asked Flood to rescue Kennedy. When Flood walked in he was attacked by the Constable boys and some of their friends. Before the police arrived, Flood's nephew joined in and was knocked out with a paling. Half an hour later Flood was in the bar cooling down when John Constable walked in.  Before Constable could say a word, Flood leaped to his feet, knocked him down and promised to do the same for any one of Constable's 'flash mob of sons'.